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Puttin' on the list: AAA honors 31 Ritz properties

By Gene Sloan, USA TODAY

Luxury chain Ritz-Carlton is the big winner today as AAA announces its Five Diamond Awards for 2006.

The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco has garnered praise from both Mobil and AAA.

The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco

The non-profit travelers' club is adding three more Ritz-run hotels and one Ritz restaurant to its annually updated list of winners, giving the chain a record 31 properties on the list. (Four Seasons has 24.) (Business Connection video: AAA doles out hotel stars)

Gaining five-diamond status: The Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch, in Beaver Creek, Colo.; The Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota, and The Ritz-Carlton, Key Biscayne, both in Florida. Also new to the list is the Ritz-Carlton, Chicago, which actually is run by Four Seasons.

FIVE DIAMONDS AND FIVE STARS

California has more AAA Five Diamond-winning lodgings (14) than any other state. The five Five Diamond California hotels that also hold a Five Star rating from Mobil:

The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco

The Beverly Hills Hotel

Chateau du Sureau (Oakhurst)

The Peninsula Beverly Hills

Raffles L'Ermitage Beverly Hills

The new five-diamond Ritz restaurant is Fantino in the Ritz-Carlton, Cancun. AAA rated it before Hurricane Wilma ravaged the resort area. Ritz spokeswoman Vivian Deuschl says the damaged property will be closed at least through December.

The Ritzes are among six hotels and seven restaurants that AAA is adding to its list — there are 150 Five Diamond holders for 2006. Other new Five Diamond hotels: the Four Seasons Biltmore Santa Barbara in California and the Mandarin Oriental in New York.

Gone from the list are The St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort & Spa in Dana Point, Calif., and The Ritz-Carlton, New Orleans, both downgraded to four diamonds. Another former winner, the Ritz-Carlton, Palm Beach, in Manalapan, Fla., will go unrated while undergoing renovation. Two eateries, Renoir in Las Vegas and Le Cirque 2000 in New York, also are off the list, which includes 62 eateries. Both closed this year.

AAA employs 65 full-time inspectors to rate hotels and restaurants in the USA, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. They arrive at properties unannounced and look at service levels, amenities and ambience, awarding from one to five diamonds. Results are published in AAA guidebooks, free to members.

Just three hotels have won a Five Diamond Award every year since AAA began its ratings in 1976: Camelback Inn, a JW Marriott Resort & Spa in Scottsdale, Ariz.; The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs; and The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.